155 



seeds are the produce of different species, or of varieties of one species, 

 and the literature on the subject has to a certain extent been over- 

 looked. Dr K. Schumann of Berlin, who has recently investigated 

 the matter, and has written a monograph on the genus Cola, has 

 divided that genus, which now comprises thirty species into sub-genera. 

 He includes the kola nut in his sub-genus Autocola, which is charac- 

 terised by the stamens, or rather sessile half-authers being arranged 

 in two rows one above the other, and not in a single row as in the 

 majority of specie?. 



Dr. Schumann describes the fruit of Cola acuminata as having a 

 fleshy yellow pericarp, with an odour resembling that of Marechal Niel 

 rose, and containing four or five large seeds The seeds have a white 

 testa, which becomes brown when the fruit dehisces, and they become 

 exposed to the light. The embryo consists of four cotyledons, of a 



carmine" red colour, which when separated, present a triangular, or 

 externally a convex form. These remarks apply to the kola nut 

 brought to Germany from the Cameroons. 



Examination of specimens of the kola plants in the Herbarium of 

 the Botanical ^Museum at Berlin showed that one plant from 

 Ashanii, collected by Cummins, and another from Sierra Leone, col- 

 lected by Afzelius, difltrrcd from the true Cola acuminata in having 

 the stigmas bioad, obtuse, and closely pressed to the ovary. Speci- 

 mens of the kola nut \\ith two cotyhdons obtaired direct from Togo- 

 latd, and of the tree yielding it, proved to Dr SchumaDi] that the kola 

 nut of commerce having two cotyledons is the product of the tree 

 having obtuse appressfd stigmas, and not of C. acuminata, which has 

 pointed, free, curved stigmas. This new f-pecies he has named Cola 

 vera. It has seeds also of a carmine red colour when fresh. But the 

 two seeds gerniinate in a totally different manner. In the one, C. ac- 

 uminata, the four cotyledons spread open and the plumule grows up 

 in the centre ; in the other, C. vera, the two cotylpdons remain closed, 

 and the plumule arises outside them 



These two are not the only species yielding edible seeds. The C. 

 hpidota, Schm , which belcngs to the same sub-genus, having the 

 anthers in a single row only, but seeds with two cotyledons, and ano- 

 ther species used by the Bali people, are also eaten. How much these 

 different seeds vary in the amount of the caffeine and theobromine they 

 contain has not yet been ascertained, but the seeds of Cola vera are 

 the most highly prized. The large leaf in which they are wrapjDcd is 

 identified as that of Cola cordifolia. 



The two different kola seeds above described were noticed as long ago 

 as 1860. C, Barter, in his account of the plants found during the Xiger 

 Expedition, given in the Journ. Linn. Soc lY., p. 19, states that there 

 are two kinds of kola nuts, one with four cotyledons, called Fatak" 

 by the Foulahs, and the other with two cotyledons, called Ganja, by the 

 same people. The latter were said to come from the Ashanti Country, 

 but he had not seen the tree. The species with four cotyledons he 

 had seen at Fernando Po, and in many parts of the lower Xiger, 

 abundant at Onitsba, occurriDg also at Prince's Island, and apparently 

 common along the coast, the flowers being variable in colour, cream- 

 coloured, greenish yellow and pale red. The seeds appeared to be 

 carried in about equal quantities into the interior, but the one with twa 



